Future Imperfect
by Cheshire Catalyst
Summary: What if Sonic ran into an enemy he couldn't defeat? What if he died? Who would continue his legacy? Rated T for some language and themes. Chapter three is now up. Some familiar faces appear. Hold on, the ride is only beginning. ShadowxAMy
1. Introduction to the end

This is my first fanfic. It's supposed to start out slow, but expect a climactic final battle. Please submit reviews, especially constructive criticism. Please no flames about who dies. I didn't do it because I don't like the character(s), but because it adds to the story.

Enjoy.

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The light of the moon played through the ruins of the decimated skyscrapers. No one remembered the name of the city. All cities looked the same now. The remains of a park were laid out between the buildings. The trees were bare and long dead, and the only piece of the playground still standing was a solitary swing set. Even that was devoid of all but one swing.

Its occupant was a young pink hedgehog, no longer vibrant in color as she was when she was younger, but a subdued, faded pink. The chains creaked as she rocked to and fro, and her quills swayed gently in the breeze. Even though she was wearing a sweater, she shivered. Here, she was alone.

Or so she thought.

There was a rush of wind and a blur of motion, and a black hedgehog was beside her. She didn't even flinch. She was used to his sudden entrances.

"There you are," he said, "You shouldn't be wandering about by yourself, not in these times, in your condition."

There was a look of genuine concern on his hard face. His crimson eyes pierced the darkness, staring at her as though he was afraid to blink, lest he lose her again. His quills were jet black, no longer bearing the red streaks of his youth. He resembled his namesake more with each passing day.

She said nothing at first, and then, softly, "Today is his birthday. He would have been twenty if he was… if he was still…"

"Shhh," he stopped her, "I know. We all miss him. Maybe if he was still here things wouldn't be like this. But he's gone. We can't change that now."

"I know," she said, "but I can't help but deny it to myself."

She never looked at him. Her gaze remained locked on the tree in the middle of the park. The tree itself was covered in carvings, messages to a departed hero. In its shadow stood a headstone, a somber sentinel standing watch over the grave. Two red shoes hung by their laces from a branch. It was all that was left of the world's fastest hedgehog.

"I still have nightmares of that day," She said, pained, tears welling in her eyes, "I can't forget. I still remember."

"As do we all," he replied, his fingers tracing the scar that spanned his body from shoulder to hip, "As do we all."

He wrapped his arms around her from behind, putting his cheek against hers. He caressed her belly, feeling the tautness of her skin, the slightly larger than normal curves of her stomach.

"We can't dwell on the past forever," he whispered into her ear. We need to think about the future. _Our_ future."

She smiled a weary smile and leaned back against him. She placed her hands on top of his. "Even with that thing still out there, at least there's still one place I can be safe. Here. In your arms."

He held her closer. "I _will_ protect you. _Both_ of you," he said, rubbing her stomach.

"You'd better go inside," he said.

"Alright," she replied gently.

They kissed, and he ran her hands through her quills. They parted slowly, and she went back to their building.

As soon as he was sure she was gone, he walked over to the grave. The soil was as dry as it had been five years ago. He traced the letters on the grave with his fingers: S-O-N-…he stopped. His eyes were watering.

"You moron," he said, "You had to be a hero. You had to sacrifice yourself. Why?!?"

He fell to his knees.

"You were supposed to _WIN_ damnit!"

He punched the tombstone.

"You were our hero!"

_Punch._

"Our savior!"

_Punch._

"Our _hope_!"

_Punch._

"Damn…"

He braced himself on the tombstone. There was a circle of mud at his feet from his tears.

"I can't do this you stupid bastard. I can't save the world by myself. I'm not a hero. I'm not you. Why did you have to die?"

No reply came. The only sound that reached his ears was the whistling of the wind and the creak of a rusty swingset.


	2. Speak of the Devil

Here's the next chapter. I took more time on this one, and I took into consideration the suggestions of those who reviewed it. Thank you for helping this along! As thanks, I'll try to turn out the chapters fairly quickly.

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Though she shut the door gently, Amy Rose couldn't help but knock loose a few loose bits of wall from the decrepit old building. It was in better shape than the surrounding ones, but it still fell apart constantly. She was fairly sure everybody else was asleep, and was trying very hard not to wake them. She winced as the pieces of old plaster bounced off her shoes.

She stepped over the comparatively larger hunks of rubble in the entryway and worked her way through to the surveillance room. There was a faint flickering blue glow from under the door. Apparently, she and Shadow weren't the only ones who couldn't sleep. Amy turned the knob and pushed it open.

Her eyes adjusted slowly to the brightness of the room. Sitting at a desk with a display of about a dozen computers was a yellow fox. He was slightly younger than Amy, but appeared much older. His fur was disheveled and matted, and the old pilot's jacket he wore was torn so badly there was no way he wore it to fight the bitter cold. His eyes were glued to the monitors, hardly blinking.

"Miles," she said, "I thought you were in bed. Today was a long day, and all of us need our rest. Including you."

"No," he replied, "I'm not tired. This is more important than sleeping, anyway. Over the past few weeks there have been spikes in Chaos energy all over the globe. It's moving faster now, and soon it will find us. We need to know when it comes. If I don't watch the data constantly, who will?"

He spun his wheelchair around to face her. In the same day that many had lost so much, Miles had lost his right leg and both of his tails. All that was left of his trademark golden tails were a couple of mangled stumps. The shock of his best friend's death and his own dismemberment had nearly killed him. He was both the luckiest and unluckiest survivor of them all. He had overcome insurmountable odds to survive, but now he couldn't fly, only roll about pitifully. Needless to say, nobody called him Tails anymore.

"Do you see what I've been monitoring for the past few hours?" he asked her.

She glanced at the screens. Most of the data readout was to complex for her to get, though she understood the map well enough. At first it appeared to be a weather radar, though this was not true. There was only one moving mass, and it was almost perfectly circular. Judging from the scale of the map, it was a roughly three hundred miles in diameter. Right now it was nearly on the other side of the planet, but she knew it had a tendency to jump about.

"Why is it searching so hard to find us?" she asked, "It can't be worried about us, can it? I mean, Shadow is the only one left with any serious power, and even he couldn't stop it before. All the others are dead or missing, so we can't possibly be a threat to it, can we?"

"I don't know," he replied, "It doesn't think like we do. It's hard to fathom its motives. All we can do is guess. It's not like Robotnik. It's not going to announce its plans to us weeks in advance."

She giggled. "I almost miss that jerk. He was pretty bad, but at least he wasn't pure evil. He was a lot easier to beat, too."

The corner of Miles' mouth slanted upward slightly. It was the closest he ever got to smiling.

"Yeah, those were the good days. Kicking Buttnick's butt and saving the world, no prob. Even when it seemed impossible, Sonic would always…"

She looked at him. His head was hanging down in what she could only think was guilt. Miles still blamed himself a little for what happened. He, Shadow, Knuckles, and Omega were the only ones to witness Sonic's death. He wasn't as strong as the others, and was seriously traumatized.

"I'm sorry," she said.

He perked his head up in an attempt to cover his sorrow. He shook his head.

"No, no, it's okay. There are more important things to worry about. Oh, speaking of which, you haven't had a screening in about a week, have you? I can do that for you while we're in here."

The room not only served as their link to satellite surveillance, but was also a makeshift hospital room for the survivors. Amy herself couldn't tell which equipment was which most of the time, let alone run it, so she depended on Miles to take care of those things.

Amy smiled. She was willing to do pretty much anything if it would help get his mind off of Sonic. She laid down on the table in the medical station half of the room and pulled her shirt up partway. Miles rolled over to the control station and booted up the scanner. Four oblong glass tubes on mechanical arms formed a square around her stomach. They let of a light, bathing her body in a blue glow.

"Here comes the readout," Tails called from the control station.

An image came onscreen. It was blurry, and in black and white. The machinery they were using was old and outdated, but it still worked well enough to tell what they were looking at. Amy peered closely, and could make out a pointy nose, closed little eyes, and a miniscule mouth. It was a face she had never seen in reality, but had still grown very close to it. The scanner even picked up the beginnings of quill patches, downy soft but still spiking backwards in every which-way like its father's. She hoped it would have its father's eyes, too.

"Oh!" Tails called out, "Amy! I think it's developed to the stage we can tell which sex it is!"

She let a gasp escape her mouth. "Are you sure? How can you tell?"

He coughed into his hand and pointed at the screen. She blushed.

"Oh," she said, slightly embarrassed, "I guess it's a boy."

He helped her off the table with one hand while steadying his wheelchair with the other. He escorted her back to her room, though he was more infirm than she was. She grinned a little. He always tried so hard to not let anyone help him. She just happened to be the easiest person for him to help, as far along in her pregnancy as she was.

They said their goodnights, and Miles wheeled down the hall to his room. Amy slipped out of her clothes and stared at herself in the mirror. It was undeniable now, the baby was coming soon. Some days it was all she thought about. She pulled an extra large nightgown on over her head and lowered herself onto the mattress Shadow had carried from the junkyard seven miles away.

Amy curled up in her bed, cradling her belly in her arms. She couldn't help but think, _what kind of world am I bringing him into?_

Just as she was drifting off to sleep a dark figure came into the room. She felt a wave of comfort wash over her worried thoughts and allowed herself to fall asleep. She smiled in her sleep as Shadow stroked her face, blissfully unaware of the upcoming disaster.

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High in the air aboard a massive warship, a radar tracker had honed in on its target's position. The tiny blip on the screen was near enough that they could reach it the next day. Several robots scurried up and down the corridors attempting to put out the numerous fires that were springing up and block off the massive holes in the hull. Many larger ones were arming themselves with vicious weaponry. Shoulder mounted rockets, white hot laser projectors, gatling guns, and myriad other weapons were being bolted into place on the combat units. Still others were manning the assembly lines, creating more of their brethren to assist in the work.

In the control room sat their leader, the only organic on the entire ship and the only human left in the world. He was quite large, and looked like he once had been fat. Currently he was muscular and fit, though he was getting on in years. He was bald, and his vivid orange mustache was streaked with grey. He peaked his fingers and laughed maniacally.

"Come on boys!" he yelled at the robots, "Hurry it up! We don't want our surprise party to be anything less than spectacular, now do we?"

The robots picked up their pace. It wouldn't be long now before they met the remnants of their greatest foes.

He laughed.


	3. A New Face, an Old Face

It came to her like it was yesterday. The four of them stayed behind to hold it off while the others went after the Master Emerald. Tails followed Sonic to try to help. There was a burst of light, and screaming. She had the emerald, but it caught up to her. It slowly pried the Emerald from her grasp, and it almost seemed to smile as it melted through a crack in the universe, completing its transformation as it absorbed the Master Emerald. With the emeralds gone, Angel Island could no longer hold itself aloft. It had left them for dead. Their screams were swept away in the wind.

But it hadn't anticipated Shadow's next move.

She came to on a hillside covered in blood. _Shadow's_ blood. The black hedgehog lay on the ground next to Tails. Both of them were bleeding profusely. She screamed.

Fast forward.

It began devouring whole cities. At first it was fast, but then it slowed down. It wanted to have some fun. Amy had seen news coverage of it picking the meat off the bones of civilians. While they were still alive. It had let the news crews film it. It wanted people to know. It wanted them to be afraid.

Next scene: the present.

They were always in hiding. The world's population had slowly dwindled to almost nothing. It was searching everywhere for food. So they hid. Shadow had been the one to pull them through it all. He had found shelter and food for the four of them. He had collected Tails' equipment. He had been there to comfort Amy when she grieved over Sonic…

Then it was different.

It was dark, as pitch black as ink. Then there was a sliver of light on the horizon. Amy felt like a giant, standing on the top of the world. She felt as though there was nowhere to hide. The light grew brighter, and she put up her hands to shield her eyes. The light snuck in through her fingers, forcing its way into her sight. It was no longer a light, but a fire. It burned her down to the soul, forcing its way into her mind, violating her very being. The flames coalesced into a burning face, a hellish skull with coals for eyes. Its crooked fangs smiled.

"_I SEE YOU_"

She woke in a cold sweat. Her heart was pounding like a drum and her hands wouldn't stop shaking. There was a burning sensation throughout her body. She wept.

Shadow stirred next to her, awakened by her crying. He sat up and blearily rubbed the sleep from his eyes with one hand.

"Are you alright?" He asked, concerned, "What is it? What's going on?"

"It's n-nothing," she replied shakily, "just a bad dream."

He hugged her closely as she buried her face in his chest. Hot tears ran down her nose and dripped off into the downy patch of fur on his chest.

"It's all right," He consoled her "I'm here."

"And what good is _that_ gonna do?" came a voice from the doorway.

They both turned, neither of them quite believing what they had heard.

"You…"

Standing in the door was a red echidna. His dreadlocks hung down to his ankles. Body armor covered the left half of his chest. Twin spikes erupted from the backs of both of his massive fists.

The one body not accounted for, the one they all had assumed was dead, had come back.

"Hey guys, mind if I come in?"

Knuckles had returned.

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At the edge of the city, a hooded creature knelt to the ground on one knee. He lifted a pawful of dirt to its snout and sniffed. It smelled like… hedgehogs… fox… echidna… and something else he couldn't quite place. This was it. He was sure of it. His quills stood on end in anticipation.

He stood up. His targets were close. He reslung the giant blade hanging over his shoulder. The hooks hanging from its length rattled as he did so.

"There's not much time left," he said to himself, "I'd better find them."

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Amy rushed to hug Knuckles.

"You're alive!" she shouted, tears of joy in her eyes.

Shadow nodded acknowledgement towards him, glaring through squinting eyes.

"Hey."

Amy pulled herself away from him, startled at first, and then suddenly furious.

"Where the HELL have you been? We thought you were DEAD!"

He chuckled slightly, "That's the Amy I know. I'm not dead, not yet. I'm too stubborn to let a little fall like that take me out. As for where I've been, I've been pretty much everywhere. I've been looking for a way to beat Armageddon. I think I've done more in the past few years than all of you combined. I've got a secret weapon."

He flung open the curtains and shouted to the world outside, "ECHIDNA! ANSWER ME!"

The earth shook with the rumbling of two thousand mighty fists beating the ground, and the air seemed to split with the battle cries of a thousand voices.

"ECHIDNA! ECHIDNA! ECHIIIIIIIDNAAAAAA!"

Shadow and Amy stared, their mouths hanging open. Knuckles pivoted to face them, holding his arms in the air to bask in the glory.

"How about it guys? Who's up for saving the world one last time?"


End file.
